Hey, no offense – I am a now former Colorado-based affiliate for Amazon.com and apparently I am worthless. For one, in a certain way I agree with Amazon’s step to remove Colorado affiliates from their partnership program, but I think they should also stop shipping products to Colorado customers to really make a stand. I think the law is unconstitutional and somebody needs to fight it. Who better than a company with an army of lawyers and deep pockets?!
Anyway, being an affiliate in a merchant’s partner program requires a certain relationship. I provide value to the merchant and the merchant provides me with tools to advertise his products and at the end of the day we all go home happy. I create revenue for the merchant and the merchant pays me for my efforts.
However, with Amazon this is different. They do not care about you. Amazon does not care about its affiliates a single moment. Why? They terminated us without a warning. We never saw any email during the fight here in Colorado about the house bill that eventually would have created nexus for Amazon. There was no communication, no nothing. I do not know how many affiliates Amazon had in Colorado, but I could have imagined we would have seen more people at the Capitol fighting this if Amazon would have mobilized its affiliate army by providing guidance and communication. No, instead affiliates never heard a thing. March 1st went by and the law went into effect and no emails about termination from Amazon arrived. I personally slowly had the hope this thing would be over with, until I woke up this morning and found an email from Amazon in my Inbox:
Hasta la Vista, Baby. You are terminated.
So, Amazon is making its stand on the back of us affiliates. We do the initial fighting and now we are collateral damage among the way. Amazon is trying to use us affiliates as a tool against the government. Good luck with that, Amazon. I will switch merchants and find other means of income, but even if you open the doors again for Colorado affiliates, I will not make that switch back when the time comes and a different merchant is working out.
How much value does an affiliate have for Amazon? Not much. See this screenshot of a Google Adwords ad I saw today while searching the news for more information about what happened in Colorado today. Low prices on Affiliates …
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